Remind me to stay out of Texas. Not only because I could be shot dead if I refused to deliver services previously arranged for. Just on principle. BTW is prostitution legal in god-humpin' Texas these days?

No, prostitution is not legal in Texas, per se, but you wouldn't know that by all the whorehouses ... err ... I mean, strip clubs in Houston. They are only a couple of miles from Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church.

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John 14:2 :: In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

Baltimore is not awful, nor quite as dangerous as it is made out to be.

I was there a year ago. It was a mixed bag. I couldn't walk 10 yards without a beggar hitting me up for money. And it was the usual baloney scam: "I am driving a bus for a church group that broke down a couple blocks away. We need some money to repair the bus..."

In the inner harbor they have pedestrian bridges from the hotels. Several homeless people used them to do number 2s in them.

Lexington St market is a wonderful place. I ate oysters there the size of my palm. No joke. and the crab cakes are for-flipping-real. However, to get there you must run a gauntlet through one of the worst neighborhoods I have ever been through in my life. Cracked out zombies shuffle along the sidewalks.

This place was awesome. Great food choices for every taste and an interesting crowd. You get the ultimate Baltimore experience: crackheads and crab cakes!

Totally true.

I ate a shit-ton of crabs at Moe's. I also drank a lot of beer. It brought me as close to the divine as I can imagine. There is another Moe's around the block, but it's a pretender. Eat not there.

There are good things in Baltimore. There is also danger and shit. I mean both literally. Like everything, it is not monolithic. I would go back for Moe's and to watch the Yankees beat the piss out of the Uh-Os. (I flipping love baseball.) I have very good things to say about Camden Yards, though do not buy crab cakes at the park.

It seemed to me Baltimore needed more blue collar jobs and less tourist bullshit. You just cannot support a city that size with tourism at the waterfront.

A Texas jury acquitted a man for the murder of a woman he hired as an escort, after his lawyers claimed he was authorized to use deadly force because she refused sex.

...

This shockingly broad statute authorizes individuals to take not just law enforcement, but punishment, into their own hands and impose death for alleged offenses that would never warrant the death penalty even if the person were convicted in court.

Apparently the jury decided that, by golly, she should have given back that $150 he gave her in the first place.

I'm guessing the "open for business" sign in Texas just got flipped to "CLOSED" for whores, prostitutes and call girls.

WTF?

PENAL CODE TITLE 2. GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITYCHAPTER 9. JUSTIFICATION EXCLUDING CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITYSec. 9.42 A person is justified in using deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property - Fine(2) when and to the degree he reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary - Hmmm. Ok but define reasonable.B) to prevent the other who is fleeing immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the property; and - And. And is important here.3) he reasonably believes that:(A) the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means - Can not be protected by other means. A man can't overpower a female without shooting her? Or take her to civil court. Or report a theft to the police.

Well MrJason, you have to keep in mind that since he was committing an illegal act by trying to force her into sex in the first place, he had no legal options for recovering that money. And perhaps he couldn't effectively overpower her by any other means at the time to get it back. Therefore his situation may well have fit the definition laid out.

I was there a year ago. It was a mixed bag. I couldn't walk 10 yards without a beggar hitting me up for money.

You were in the tourist area, primarily the Inner Harbor. The beggars know where the money is. For years there was this guy -- Lenny? -- who would roam the area east of the Inner Harbor (not quite into Little Italy) and flash open his trench coat with watches for people to buy. He seemed more like a street comic than a serious hot-watch salesman. John Waters is right when he says that Baltimore is full of people that just don't really fit in anywhere else. Of course, he may have been referring only to drag queens, big hair and Hons, but that's just his slice of life.

West Lexington, north of the tracks and west of MLK Boulevard is about 2 steps above a shit hole. A few streets through there have been revitalized and are decent. The rest ... oy! Yeah, I don't want my car to break down through there. I travel through that section of the city all too often.

In the inner harbor they have pedestrian bridges from the hotels. Several homeless people used them to do number 2s in them.

Strange. I haven't used any of those hotel bridges in years and some of them have been closed off to non-guests for some time. Maybe they've been re-opened for the general public? I'm more likely to suspect that somebody has let their dogs take a shit up there, but who knows.

Lexington St market is a wonderful place. I ate oysters there the size of my palm. No joke. and the crab cakes are for-flipping-real. However, to get there you must run a gauntlet through one of the worst neighborhoods I have ever been through in my life. Cracked out zombies shuffle along the sidewalks.

This place was awesome. Great food choices for every taste and an interesting crowd. You get the ultimate Baltimore experience: crackheads and crab cakes!

Totally true.

I ate a shit-ton of crabs at Moe's. I also drank a lot of beer. It brought me as close to the divine as I can imagine. There is another Moe's around the block, but it's a pretender. Eat not there.

Baltimore is chock full of great food, especially seafood, as are most places in Maryland. After living here for 25+ years, and going other places (outside of Maryland) to try seafood, I can tell you that the ability to prepare seafood is a specialty here that is equaled nowhere else. Even our tiny shit-shacks on creaky piers in the Bay know how to make good seafood whereas in most other places there are only one or two fine restaurants that know how to make good seafood. Crabs and crabcakes are the specialty. The best time in Maryland is a warm summer day with steamed crabs and good beer (not NattyBo).

There are good things in Baltimore. There is also danger and shit. I mean both literally. Like everything, it is not monolithic. I would go back for Moe's and to watch the Yankees beat the piss out of the Uh-Os. (I flipping love baseball.) I have very good things to say about Camden Yards, though do not buy crab cakes at the park.

Camden Yards is a very nice place. I wouldn't buy any seafood at a ballpark. I would buy only what they know how to make best: hotdogs and pretzels.

It seemed to me Baltimore needed more blue collar jobs and less tourist bullshit. You just cannot support a city that size with tourism at the waterfront.

There is a lot more to Baltimore besides the tourist trade. The Port of Baltimore does a lot of business. If you live East of the Mississippi River and you drive a car built in Japan, it came through Baltimore. There are giant lots of freshly baked cars near the ports that most people never see -- nobody really wants to go down there. Tons of other things come through the ports. The steel mill closed, McCormick Spice moved to the suburbs. The Social Security Administration and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS) have been headquartered just outside of Baltimore for 60+ years.

Baltimore is also home to a lot of medical research facilities despite the blue-collar history of the city. Johns Hopkins has 4 campuses and University of Maryland medical, dentistry and law schools are in Baltimore, as well. Government, education and charitable institutions offer lots of employment for the region. Colleges are everywhere. Surrounding BWI are tons of high-tech companies, warehouses and who knows what else.

The city itself is slowly morphing into a place to live, be entertained, get medical care and get educated.

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John 14:2 :: In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

Well MrJason, you have to keep in mind that since he was committing an illegal act by trying to force her into sex in the first place, he had no legal options for recovering that money. And perhaps he couldn't effectively overpower her by any other means at the time to get it back. Therefore his situation may well have fit the definition laid out.

Really, really stupid law.

So, you can now shoot a drug dealer who refuses to give you drugs after you give him the money, and not go to jail for it? Open season, y'all.

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When all of Cinderella's finery changed back at midnight, why didn't the shoes disappear? What's up with that?

So you survive the wars from hell and get killed by your 4 year old. Pretty ironic. FOX is already spinning this by saying the dad and his son showed up at a friend's house unannounced and the kid found the gun in the livingroom. So the gun owner is off the hook because he did not know this kid was coming over.

This week's compilation includes: six concealed carry ninjas who accidentally shot themselves; four cops who shot themselves (including two local chiefs of police); one gun store owner (i.e., a civilian "gun expert"); one person who shot themselves supposedly teaching another person how to shoot safely; two people cleaning loaded guns (and one who claims he was cleaning it, but sounds like he really wasn't); four kids shot by other kids and one adult shot by a 4-year-old; two pre-schoolers who shot their own fingers off; three home invasion shootings, plus one accidental shooting of someone on an adjacent property and one shooting inside of a single house, but between floors of that house; two gun carriers who accidentally discharged their weapons while out shopping among the public they were making safer, and; 14 kids accidentally shot, aged 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 10, 12, 13, 13, 14, 16, 16, 17 and 17. Six of those kids were killed.

"gun experts" accidentally shooting themselves cracks me up. They should resign and be forced to wear bells around their necks to identify them as people not allowed to handle guns.

Seriously why are these people allowed to handle guns? If you drive a car and accidentally hurt someone with it you get banned from driving, the same should apply to accidents with other lethal weapons

As a lifelong career criminal, although I no longer enjoy the right to keep and bear arms, I'd like to take a moment to express my appreciation to the National Rifle Association for nonetheless protecting my ability to easily obtain them through its opposition to universal background checks.

Upon release in a few years from my current federal sentence on bank robbery and weapons charges, I fully anticipate being able to stop at a gun show on my way home to Connecticut -- where new laws have made it nearly impossible for a felon to readily purchase guns or ammunition -- in order to buy some with which to resume my criminal activities.

And so, a heartfelt thank you to the NRA and all those members of Congress voting with them. I, along with tens of thousands of other criminals, couldn't do what we do without you.

Gary W. Bornman, The writer is an inmate at the federal "Supermax" prison in Florence, Colo.

Think progress links his registry in the federal prison database. I checked snopes and found no hits. May be too early. I did find an article about someone of the same name having been convicted in Connecticut. Seems legit.

Customers pay $795 to take part in the firefight flight, which includes a safety training class, awards ceremony and lunch. Well, and unlike an actual firefight, no returning fire. The individual flights are relatively short, lasting about 15 minutes per person. Still, that’s enough time to fire off an estimated 500 rounds of .233 semiautomatic rifle ammunition...."It's not like we're hitting this every day," Claassen told the station. "So it's not noise pollution. So there is no noise. It's the world safest and quietest helicopter."

There is no noise? Is that because everyone is deaf after the first 100 rounds?

We all know that a helicopter is the safest form of flight in existence. What could possibly go wrong?

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John 14:2 :: In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

Agreed. Any law that permits someone to take a life to avoid the loss of property (money or otherwise) is a disgrace.

I want to see a situation where a black mentally ill convicted felon shoots a white gun dealer for not selling him a gun. The "guns for all" people's heads will explode.

Remember that an armed society is a polite society. Like Japan. They are so polite because they are all secretly packing under those business suits, kimonos and anime costumes. Concealed carry cosplay.

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When all of Cinderella's finery changed back at midnight, why didn't the shoes disappear? What's up with that?